Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Of course, but I will not look for you to join us in the Division Lobby, Mr Hoyle. The Government might say in their charming, elegant and smooth way that this is a hypothetical situation because the honest truth is that in all normal circumstances no Government and no Prime Minister would ever choose to circumvent the power of the House on the two-thirds majority that would be needed to call an early general election by enforcing a motion of no confidence. I echo the words of the Clerk of the House in a memorandum on the Bill to the Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform: there may be little risk of an accident if one drives up the motorway on the wrong side of the road at 4 o'clock in the morning, but the impact if there were an accident is likely to be very serious, and so although the risk of a dispute about a vote to dissolve Parliament being argued out in the courts might be small if it were to happen, its impact politically and constitutionally would be very great. That is why I say to the Government that although I understand how they have ended up with this legislation—it is not that I detest every element of it, although I dislike the process and I dislike the use of the period of five years instead of four and so on—and although I think there are elements of the clause that are right and proper, I think that they have not thought through the full possible consequences of the legislation. I can easily foresee a time when a Prime Minister who is desperate to have a general election because of war, an immense financial collapse or something else that he thought was of absolute centrality to the Government that he—